Day Four - May 8th, 2008

It was hard to get up again this morning because my body is still on Utah time. The shower is a trickle so showering every morning is going to be an adventure. We swapped our days around and instead of going to Windsor we decided to head to Dover because it's a sunny day. My legs are still kinda protesting from yesterdays abuse, but they'll stretch out.

We hopped the Tube to Victoria Station and had to run to catch our train to Dover. After leaving London the countryside is gorgeous! Fields of yellow flowers and green countryside. Rolling hills and orchards. We sat across from a guy named Michael. He's at University at Canterbury and a very nice guy. He kindly answered all Mom's questions, of which there were plenty. After getting off the train in Dover we took a taxi up to the castle and got our maps at the ticket booth. We had time to walk directly down to the Secret War Tunnels for the 13:20 tour. Very cool to walk through the underground world through which England's war effort was helped. They don't allow photography so we only got pictures of the entrances. There are three levels but they only tour 2 of them. The third if off limits.

After those tours we wandered around the castle complex which is enormous and took a lot of pictures. The admirality lookout was so windy I was afraid I'd be blown away, but it was our only view of the white cliffs. Then we walked up to the Saxon church and Roman Light tower. Very beautiful buildings! We walked along the burm around the church and took more pics. Then we actually made it into the castle's keep which is immense and remarkably well preserved. They don't have guided tours, so we just wandered up and down a ton of staircases. Mom loved it. :D I really liked the keep. We got to go up on the roof even! They are quite unconcerned for safety here. They assume that you're smart enough to follow signs and common sense. I love it! There must be a lot of stupid Americans, or we've allowed ourselves to be dumbed down. Here they don't have tons of people standing around to make sure you don't do something stupid. It's great.

After we finished at the castle we walked back down the hill towards the train station. A long, but fun walk, since we got to walk through town. I love English towns! I could take dozens of pictures of just one street after another. We got sandwiches at Subway (real authentic English food!) to eat on the train back into London. Such cute, quaint little train stops along the way. I took several pictures. The train ride was nice but seemed to get long at the end.


We made it back to Maida Vale pretty quickly and decided to walk to the church down the street. We ended up walking back through the Rec grounds across the street. The flowers smell so good right now! The air is perfumed by them. Both here and at Dover Castle. I took some pictures of the flowering things. As well as the church. Mom can't stand to do things on the fly, she has to have them planned all out. Funny. And I got my first blister today!